Tag Archives: INE

Since a little over 20 years ago, holding debates between candidates has become common in the Mexican political environment. Naturally, the first efforts were made during presidential campaigns. In fact, the first presidential debate was held during the 1994 elections. However, from that moment on, gubernatorial debates have been also increasingly common. The first public and broadcasted debate of this type was in 1997, during the first campaign to elect the Mayor of Mexico City. Debates have been driven either by electoral authorities or by media outlets. In this context, during the campaigns that today come to an end, there have been debates among the candidates for most of the 2015 gubernatorial elections.

Nuevo León, one of the most important states whose gubernatorial election became more competitive as campaigns advances, had 5 debates. One organized by electoral authorities, one more organized by the Civic Council Citizen through its platform Nuevo León ¿Cómo Vamos? two organized by universities (the University of Monterrey and Universidad Regiomontana) and the other one organized by El Norte, a leading newspaper from Grupo Reforma. Some have been summoned all candidates and in others only the pointers in the polls.

In all debates, each of the candidates has established his or her priorities and government plans in case of winning. The most recurrent themes were corruption and transparency, security, urban planning, and social and economic development. As a symbol of a closed competition, the meetings have not been free of attacks and insults among candidates.

Nuevo León debate organized by Nuevo León ¿Cómo Vamos? (in Spanish)

Nuevo León debate organized by the University of Monterrey (in Spanish)

Nuevo León debate organized by electoral authorities (in Spanish)

Nuevo León debate organized by El Norte (in Spanish)

In Michoacán, electoral authorities organized two debates. All the candidates were invited. Given the latest developments in the state, it was no surprise that much of the discussion centered on proposals and recriminations on the subject of security.

Michoacán first debate (in Spanish)

In Guerrero, state electoral authorities hosted a debate among all candidates for the governorship. As in the case of Michoacán, security was a recurring issue in all of the speeches and proposals. The candidates also addressed issues of poverty, tourism, public health, and social development.

Guerrero first debate (in Spanish)

Other entities such as Sonora, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Baja California Sur, and Campeche also carried out one or two debates among candidates. In most states, there were other spaces where candidates contrast their proposals.

Querétaro first debate (in Spanish)

Sonora first debate (in Spanish)

Undoubtedly, the debates are important to the electorate, as they are spaces in which the contrast of ideas and positions is clearer than in speeches and/or political rallies. Of course, these kind of democratic exercises also serve to discredit and attack the opponents, which is also a good sign of democracy, as the political act is not without the clash of ideas. It is positive that debates in Mexico are becoming more common and that the both citizens and the media see these spaces as the right place to bounce ideas among the various candidates. Hopefully, these exercises will also help to increase citizen participation in the elections next Sunday.

The head of Mexico’s National Electoral Institute was forced to apologize after illegally recorded audio of him ridiculing indigenous people leaked online. Lorenzo Córdova Vianello, the director of the group that will oversee the country’s elections June 7, was still trending on Twitter Wednesday morning as users passed around the controversial clip.

The audio, thought to have been obtained via wiretap, was posted to YouTube on Tuesday afternoon by “Jon Doe.” The roughly two-minute video reportedly includes a part of a conversation between Córdova and his executive secretary, Edmundo Jacobo.

The exchange likely happened after an April 23 meeting where indígenas, or indigenous people, asked to be allowed to create another federal constituency in Congress, Excelsior reported. The indígenas had said they’d stop the elections if their requests weren’t granted, and they eventually met with Córdova.

The next day, in conversation with Jacobo, Córdova made fun of what they said. He compared the leaders to characters in the “Lone Ranger” and ridiculed how they spoke, Telesur reported. “From the dramatic meetings with the parents of the Ayotzinapa kids, to this jerk … There was one, no s—, I can’t lie, let me tell you how this jerk spoke,” Córdova said in Spanish. “’I boss, great nation Chichimeca, I come Guanajuato. I say here or legislators, for us, I don’t permit your elections.’”

MEXICO CITY — Racism in Mexico has different dynamics than over the border in the United States.

The majority of people here have both European and indigenous roots. The census does not identify people by skin color. After the Mexican Revolution, the government promoted the concept of the “Raza Cosmica,” an ideal of a mixed-race nation.

Lorenzo Cordova, president of the National Electoral Institute, was talking on the phone to an aide when he launched into his racist rant.

He ridiculed an indigenous leader who’d called for a new electoral district, saying, “I’m not lying, I’m going to tell you how this bastard spoke.” Then he proceeded to impersonate Tonto from the “Lone Ranger”: “Me, boss Chichimeca great nation. Me come Guanajuato. Me to say you….” Then he compared the community to “Martians.”

To give a sense of how incendiary this is — it’s a bit like if a white US Supreme Court justice were caught using the N-word and speaking in mock Ebonics.

The audio of Cordova’s call mysteriously appeared on YouTube on Tuesday, and clocked up a quarter of a million views within a few hours. It went viral on Twitter and drew thousands of comments on websites.

“Incredible phone conversation of Lorenzo Cordova. Making fun of those he should be serving,” tweeted the columnist Gabriel Guerra.

It couldn’t come at a worse time for Cordova. He’s overseeing midterm elections on June 7, in which Mexico will vote for hundreds of new lawmakers, governors and mayors.

The ballot has already been clouded by corruption scandals and political violence.

On Tuesday, Cordova apologized for his outburst in a hastily called press conference.

“During the phone call I spoke in an unfortunate and disrespectful manner,” Cordova said. “I’d like to take this opportunity to offer a frank and sincere apology to anybody who could have been offended.”

However, he also filed a criminal complaint with federal prosecutors about someone recording and leaking his calls.

It’s unclear who was behind it. The audio was posted on YouTube by “Jon Doe.”

Mexico is weeks away from a landmark midterm election, but many analysts worry that the nation’s electoral authorities are dropping the ball as far as criminal organizations financing their preferred candidates.

On June 7, Mexico will elect the entire lower house of congress, nine governorships, and local offices in more than half the country. While the Senate and the presidency are not in play, it is the most important date in the electoral calendar prior to the 2018 election.

Against that backdrop, some analysts are worried that the nation’s campaign regulatory agency, the National Electoral Institute (INE), is not doing enough to prevent the flow of money stemming from organized crime into candidates’ campaign war chests. Jesus Tovar Mendoza, the Executive Director of the think tank Red de Estudios sobre la Calidad de la Democracia en America Latina, recently complained to E-Consulta that the statutes enforced by the INE are insufficient.

According to Tovar, campaigns have to make detailed filings outlining what they spend, but the INE does little to verify where the money comes from. As a result, criminal groups are able to provide cash or in-kind benefits to campaigns or directly to voters in order to sway votes. And since INE leaders are heavily reliant on the political parties for their posts, there is a heavy disincentive to crack down on illicit funding, because all of the parties benefit from extra cash flowing through the campaign coffers.

Mexico has long struggled to deal with illegal political money. In the aftermath of Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidential election in 2012, journalists and investigators turned up evidence of his party’sillegal vote-buying schemes financed through prepaid debit cards. Some of the financing for these cards was traced back to figures linked to organized crime.

Mexico has also, of course, long suffered from the links between politicians and criminal organizations, which can be solidified through campaign contributions that essentially buy a politician’s loyalty. The clearest example of this is the rash of prominent and powerful politicians who have been exposed as criminal allies, from former Michoacan Congressman Julio Cesar Godoy to Jose Luis Abarca, the former mayor of Iguala, Guerrero.

There is also the possibility that organized crime dollars could influence the outcome of the election. While swinging a presidential election in a nation of 110 million is a tall order, it is completely plausible to buy enough votes to influence a close gubernatorial election in, say Colima, a key Pacific state where 140,000 votes will likely be enough for a victory. That is to say nothing of the lightly contested local races around the country.

InSight Crime Analysis

The INE was originally created in 2013 to replace the now-defunct Federal Electoral Institute (IFE). While organized crime was not a direct cause of the switch, the new agency at least theoretically should have helped limit the presence of dirty money in elections. The INE centralized the electoral apparatus, and reduced the role of state tribunalsthat were largely beholden to governors. Because state governments are widely seen as being more susceptible to corruption than their relatively honest counterpart at the federal level, particularly with regard to organized crime, this shift theoretically should have produced a less vulnerable electoral framework.

This logic, popular though it is in Mexico, appears to have been faulty. And not for the first time: many analysts have long advocated for the disappearance of Mexico‘s thousands of municipal police departments, again on the untested theory that the mere centralization of the forces into 32 states will translate into more effective police. As with the INE’s replacement of the IFE, this was overly simplistic.

The persistent problems at the INE also demonstrate that institutional reform is a very tedious process. Mexican leaders have long demonstrated a fetish for creating new agencies when old ones fail. This is especially true in the security realm; Mexico has cycled through countless new federal police bodies over the past twenty years, none of them markedly better than their predecessors. The reason is that merely creating a new institution does nothing to strengthen it. On the contrary, often the same pathologies afflicting the old agency are absorbed into the new one. And while improving institutions is both a laudable and vital enterprise in Mexico, there is no reason to expect it to occur simply by decreeing a brand new entity. A new name is little more than a first step.

It’s hard to determine at this stage how much damage there might be from criminal groups financing politicians. It seems unlikely that the new class of leaders will be especially vulnerable to narcos, since this is not a new problem. Nevertheless, it remains clear that this is one of a number of persistent security challenges that Mexicohas been unable to surmount.

And the result is a political class of which the nation is rightly suspicious. Mexico has grown quite competent at rooting out its most dangerous criminals with regularity. A more effective INE would be an effective tool in also reining in the criminals’ political supporters, but it remains a far-off goal.

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The head of Mexico’s National Electoral Institute was forced to apologise after a recorded phone conversation leaked. The director of Mexico’s National Electoral Institute (INE) is coming under heavy fire and calls for his resignation after an audio was uploaded on Tuesday afternoon of the public servant allegedly mocking indigenous peoples and the families of the disappeared 43 Ayotzinapa students. The video has gone viral.

Lorenzo Cordova, head of the agency that guarantees and organizes national elections can be heard on a recorded telephone conversation with Edmundo Molina, Executive Secretary of the INE, ridiculing indigenous leaders who participated in a meeting with the bureaucrat, denouncing the electoral process.

“From the dramatic meetings with the parents of the Ayotzinapa kids, to this jerk…There was one, no shit, I can’t lie, let me tell you how this jerk spoke,” said Cordova. The director continued in a voice mimicking the indigenous participants of the meeting: “I boss, great nation Chichimeca, I come Guanajuato. I say here or legislators, for us, I don’t permit your elections.”

Cordova continued, in a loud laugh: “I see a lot of ‘Lone Ranger’, with this jerk ‘bull’, no shit, he only lacked saying ‘I great sitting bull chief, great leader of Chichimeca nation’, no shit, no shit, it is of horror man.”

The INE did not reject the authenticity of the audio, and later on Tuesday issued a press release in which it said it expressed its “indignation” for these kinds of activities. However it also denounced the audio as an “illegal intervention”. “With this detection of an illegal intervention of telephone conversations between the Council President and the Executive Secretary of the National Electoral Institute (INE), today a formal penal complaint has been filed with the Attorney General’s office.”

Late on Tuesday, Cordova formally apologized for the comments made on the April 24th conversation. He said in the brief press conference, “I offer a frank apology if I offended anyone with my comments.”

It is still unclear who recorded the telephone conversation, however speculation circulates as to the motivation with only weeks until Mexico’s June 7th midterm elections.

This material was originally published in TeleSUR, you can read the original post here.

Mexico’s Green Party (Partido Verde Ecologista de México, or PVEM) was penalized again this week as calls for the group’s deregistration grew. The National Electoral Institute fined PVEM about 322 million pesos, or about $21 million, Wednesday for advertisements the group paid for illegally, CNN reported. The decision came as a Change.org petition demanding authorities withdraw PVEM’s registration surpassed 150,000 signatures.

“The fines to be imposed on the Green Party are insufficient and ineffective,” the petition’s authors wrote in Spanish. “It is time that citizens demand that the law is enforced and that the authorities do their job.”

But when the topic came up Wednesday during a meeting of the congressional Permanent Commission, politicians shut it down. Senators and deputies affiliated with PVEM and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) voted against discussing opposition Sen. Armando Ríos Piter’s proposal that the party be disqualified from next month’s congressional elections, Aristegui Noticias reported.

Ríos Piter and the petitioners argued that PVEM continually violated electoral regulations. In this election cycle, the small party has been disciplined for giving out free movie tickets, gift cards and calendars made — ironically — from toxic materials, Telesur reported. “To request the cancellation of the PVEM is the least we can do,” Ríos Piter said in Spanish. “This impunity is now a reflection of the massive corruption that exists in our electoral system.”

PVEM has fired back, saying they haven’t committed any irregularities and are only being prosecuted because other parties have pressured the electoral authorities to change the rules, journalist Gustavo Rentería reported. The party’s spokesman, Charles Bridge, told reporters it intended to file a complaint against Mexico’s government in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Excelsior reported.

PVEM is one of 10 parties campaigning ahead of Mexico’s legislative election set for June 7.

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The social movement rejected claims that it supports spoiling ballots, but also denies that it supports the electoral process. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) reject calling for an abstention of Mexico’s upcoming midterm summer elections, emphasizing instead the need for people in Mexico to organize.

“As the Zapatistas that we are, we do not call for not voting, nor for voting. As the Zapatistas that we are, we do what we do, all that can be done, that is to tell the people that they should organize to resist, to struggle, so as to have what they need,” said the group in Wednesday’s communique, read by Subcomandante Moises at the Critical Thinking Against the Capitalist Hydra Seminar in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.

The indigenous social movement that rose up in arms in 1994 after the North American Free Trade Agreement was put into effect, denounced assertions made that they backed a growing campaign to boycott the state, federal and municipal elections on June 7.